If the reddit exodus happens and Lemmy gets even 2% of reddit’s daily active users, how will Lemmy sustain the increased traffic? I know donations are an option, but I don’t think long term donations will be sustainable. Most users will never donate.

I know the goal of Lemmy isn’t to make money, but I know that servers and storage costs add up quickly. Not to mention the development costs.

I would love to hear the plans for how to offset those costs in the future?

  • Dessalines@lemmy.mlEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    Recurring donations are sustainable IMO. Most open source projects have less than a handful of devs, and get less donations than the average youtuber with a patreon. Yet their work touches / reaches so many more people.

    And not just devs, but mods especially should get paid. The existing centralized social media platforms are essentially built on top of mods unpaid labor.

    • artaxadepressedhorse@lemmyngs.socialEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      But are users going to donate to both the instance(s) they’re using, and the Lemmy devs?

      Will a regular ordinary non-technical user even know to do this?

      Or would it be the responsibility of the instance admins to forward part of their donations to the Lemmy project?